


Lessons in Navigation

by ectoBisexual



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Affection, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pet Names, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Talk of Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:10:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5435948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectoBisexual/pseuds/ectoBisexual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Winter Soldier comes home, it feels like entering a warzone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons in Navigation

When the Winter Soldier comes home, it feels like entering a war zone.

“This is where you’ll sleep,” Steve explains, the sounds of his footsteps wooden and familiar on the hard floors. “And this is where I sleep. Just across the hall, in case you need anything. Don’t worry about waking me up. I’m a light sleeper these days, anyhow.”

Captain America has brought him home.

He is in a loft somewhere in New York City. He can hear the cars at night, but far-off, like a dream. He must jump at them sometimes—his body, not him, because the Winter Soldier does not jump—because Steve gets quiet and placid and wraps his arms around Bucky’s shoulders like an old song.

“Hey, hey,” he soothes, the first time, before Bucky even knows he’s jumped up against the wall and covered his ears. “Just a car horn, it’s alright. We’ll transfer somewhere quieter, I promise, soon as I get permission.”

The Winter Soldier can’t imagine why Steve Rogers needs ‘permission’ to do anything, but he figures it has to do with him.

Sometimes the Winter Soldier is Bucky, and sometimes he is not. Sometimes he is both. He’s getting better at picking good days from bad days and worse days from terrible days, but it is still something he has to work at, nothing at all like riding a bike or shooting a gun, more like complicated trigonometry or reciting a poem. If he eases up just one day—one moment, sometimes—he’ll forget altogether. It’s a constant warzone of trying to remember and forget both. And he doesn’t know whether Steve watching makes it worse.

It doesn’t, most of the time. Sometimes he’ll wake up and before he knows what he’s doing he’ll walk to the kitchen and crack some eggs into the pan, be halfway in the middle of frying them over-easy—just the way they both like—when he realises Steve is standing in the doorway watching him and forgets how to use kitchen utensils to do anything but kill again. Steve is always with him then, guiding him to sit down at the dining table while he cleans up and finishes their meal. And always the Winter Soldier is confused, thinking: where did Bucky come from this time?

Other days he wakes up in a panic, unfamiliar in a bed with soft pillows and sheets like clouds. He’ll work himself up to a sweat before Steve finds him, crouched in the darkest corner of the room and holding out the knife he keeps strapped to his left leg. There are about six others, and a gun, which Steve hadn’t minded. Once, Steve’s friend, Tony, had told him that he didn’t think the Winter Soldier plus weapons was a good idea. But Steve had argued for him, said they made him feel safe. Bucky, or the Winter Soldier, he wasn’t sure, but Steve was right. Bucky or the Winter Soldier, he wouldn’t hurt Steve now if someone held a gun to his head.

Sometimes Bucky comes out when he’s falling asleep, or trying to remember. He comes out in little inflections, little words, like babydoll lovely Steve you look like a dream honey nonsensical endearments muttered out against the blonde’s throat until he works them both down, until he isn’t Bucky or the Winter Soldier but just a confused man staring up at the most adoring and conflicted pair of blue eyes he’s ever seen.

_Why the face, doll? Pretty guy like you, shouldn’t be lookin’ so damn despairin’._

Steve just stares down at him like he’s trying to solve a puzzle. So much love, in those eyes. These are the days when Steve will let them kiss, will let Bucky’s lips press against his as if they’re pressing for answers. Honey sweet and dulcet, he lets Steve melt into him. It feels so good. Right. Like he’s got nothing to prove to anyone.

On Friday Steve doesn’t go into work, so that they can lie on the couch together, neither paying attention to the old film droning from the television. Bucky is looking at Steve and Steve is looking at the wall. He’s been saying things all afternoon that he doesn’t know the origin place of. Steve is too quiet, and the Winter Soldier is trying to figure him out.

The Winter Soldier shifts against him, lolls his head out across his lap and stretches like a cat. “Stevie,” he murmurs, the nickname coming automatic to his lips; Steve stirs.

“Yeah—yeah, baby, what is it?”

Bucky peers up at him through heavily lidded eyes, blinking lazily. Torpidly. He’s been considering the question all day, all week, really, since Steve started telling him stories about the two of them before the war again. “Why did you take me home?”

Steve sucks in another breath. His chest puffs out when he does this, so that he looks like a marble statue, broad and demanding of a presence; Bucky gets that feeling in his stomach again that everything is one step from being right.

“Bucky,” Steve whispers, stroking the hair back from his forehead. Bucky—the Winter Soldier doesn’t understand. This man looks at him like he is so much more than they both know he is meant to be. Like he’s a person; the Winter Soldier’s mind whirs, jams, tries to compute. The man looking down at him, those blue eyes; no one should have to settle.

Bucky rephrases. “Why did you give me a bed?”

“Because you deserve one,” Steven answers immediately, firmly. “You deserve a home. S’all I ever wanted to give you, Buck.”

“We were poor.” He stretches his limbs out again; something glimmers in Steve’s eye.

“That’s right. Got a real shabby place together, you and me. Heat was always out. We had to get real cozy for warmth back then, waiting for the war, freezing our asses off. Wasn’t real glamorous.”

“Glamorous,” the Winter Soldier murmurs, parroting the word. Steve gives him a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “We were lovers, then?”

“Almost.” Steve’s eyes are glimmering again. “Happened right before you got enlisted.”

“You were an artist.”

“Still am. Got my muse right here.” He’s smiling so sweetly, not the kind of smile sane men want to destroy, from the face of a man who doesn’t deserve one bad day in a million. Bucky wants to give him the whole world.

The Winter Soldier has been trying to catch up with the situation since Steve brought him home. Sometimes he feels like he’s right on the edge of understanding, and sometimes—

Well.

“Why did you give me my own bed?” he tries, and Steve finally gets it.

“You wanna sleep with me?” he asks. The Winter Soldier looks at him like it’s obvious.

“…Isn’t that what I’m for?”

Waves crashing. Buildings combusting. “Oh, Bucky—no, it’s not like that. Hey, look at me, will you?”

The Winter Soldier doesn’t understand, because he is looking at Steve. He must not be doing it right. His head hurts.

“Why didn’t you take me to bed, that first night?”

“I didn’t want you to think that I was just… that you were just… you know.”

The tension dawns on him. “Know what?” He moves closer to Steve, watches the way his chest rises again. Looking like a damn tree, a moving and breathing piece of Mother Nature’s finest. Christ—Bucky Barnes remembers this, remembers the tumult in Steve’s heart when he’s battling what he wants against what he knows is right. Bucky watches him like a dream; the Winter Soldier is bracing himself for impact, trying to remember what he was taught to do when a mission played hard to get.

“Using you…” Steve tries, swallowing, “for… that.”

“Oh, that,” Bucky says, enlightened. A grin tugs on his mouth—crooked, mind you, and with a kind of alacrity that feels positively alien to the Winter Soldier but makes Steve’s face light up like Christmas—and he moves closer to the blonde, letting instinct lead him. Instinct. Old programming, maybe, takes form in his brain; he sees Steve’s smile disappear just as quickly as it appeared, with one look at the Winter Soldier’s face. He’s doing it wrong again.

“Isn’t that how you think of me?” the Winter Soldier questions, moving closer again. The teasing grin isn’t working.

Re-evaluate. Change solutions. He tries again, pressing for answers. “Isn’t that what I’m for?”

The gentle tone doesn’t stop horror from crossing Steve’s face, horror that makes the Winter Soldier feel like he’s-- like  _it's_ \-- doing everything wrong, like his mission is escaping his grasp again.

“God—God, Buck, no—I—” His voice catches, and it breaks Bucky’s—not the Winter Soldier’s—heart. The Winter Soldier is just confused. Maybe even a little hurt—he stares back at him, blankly, feeling nothing. He’s failed somehow. Failed his mission, failed his—his creators—

And there is something. Something so candid and resistless, vulnerable, that bleeds at the very back of his brain and makes him want to move in towards Steve and never move again. His voice comes out like a child’s: “Can you think about me like that?” He thinks he whispers it so quietly that Steve doesn’t even hear, for a moment. But the look on his face is obvious. It makes him think of the smell of paint and walls cold and damp with Winter. Bucky shivers.

Steve doesn’t move. Even when the Winter Soldier leans down to look at him, caressingly, gaze burning into his, and pushes the hair back from his forehead, Steve doesn’t move. It isn’t until he leans in and presses a feather-light kiss to his jaw that his breath stirs; sucked in, violent, like the tide.

“Buck,” he says tightly. The Winter Soldier watches the lump in his throat bob with a harsh swallow. Steve places a hand to his shoulder. The Winter Soldier ignores him, peppering kisses along his jaw.

“Bucky,” he tries again. This time the other hand comes to rest on the Winter Soldier’s hip, but it doesn’t push. The Winter Soldier hums against the corner of Captain America’s mouth because it feels like muscle memory.

“Tell me,” he murmurs, pushing his hips down the way he has been taught. “Tell me you don’t want me, and I’ll stop.”

“I don’t want _this_ ,” Steve whispers. There is no mistaking the fear in his voice. Captain America, shiveringly afraid of the broken and useless thing in his lap that must remind him of a boy he used to love. The Winter Soldier closes his eyes and desperately wants to be that boy, wills it on.

“You want me, though.”

“Bucky, whatever’s going on in your head—with Hydra, what they told—what they did to you—we can figure it out. Progress, remember? I know you’re scared—”

“Scared,” Bucky hums, and hears Steve’s breath catch again, at the tone. There’s that grin again; he feels it, stretching out his face. “I’m kinda tired of being _scared_ , doll.”

“Bucky,” Steve presses, but this time actually manages to pry him away. The Winter Soldier’s chest surges for contact again, the warmth of the marble statue’s body. He won’t feel safe otherwise, won’t feel—

He needs to be contained.

“I need to be contained,” he explains, already shutting down. The look in Steve’s eyes is heartbroken. He recognises it maybe, from some time long ago. Bucky Barnes would certainly recognise it. The Winter Soldier doesn’t remember how he even got here, where he went wrong.

“Come on, baby doll, honey, sweetheart—don’t be cold, hey, d’you want me or not?”

Steve’s voice is strained with an emotion the Winter Soldier has not been taught to identify. It’s not quite weakness; he knows weakness. “This isn’t about wanting you, Buck. It’s about what’s right—”

“Please,” he gasps, expression blank as the words force themselves out. “Please, please. Everything’s about what’s right with you. I don’t care—baby, doll, Stevie, I know I’m wrong. Don’t you want me anyway? I’ve always been wrong. I’ve always been bad for you.”

“It’s not you, Buck. You’re not wrong or bad. I know it hurts right now, but you’ve gotta listen to me, alright?”

“It’s not me, it’s you?” The grin doesn’t come to his face; shutting down, he’s shutting down. The Winter Soldier takes a breath and bows his head. “I’ve failed.”

“You didn’t fail, Buck. Ease up.” Unknown hands tap his hip, and The Winter Soldier allows himself to be moved, folded to the flat surface of the sofa where he’s bound to be put away, shut down, finished for good. There are Steve’s eyes, burning into his. No, not burning. That’s not the word. The word is—is—

“Hey, hey, shh,” the blonde soothes, and only then does it occur to Bucky that the hiccupping sobs are coming from him. He lets Steve move him, move with him, until they’re lying side by side, chest to back, morning and night like two boys from the 30s who need each other like air.

“It’s not you,” Steve repeats, “it’s the situation. Wanna help, Buck, wanna make you feel good. You know that, yeah?

You’re good. But keeping you safe is a top priority right now.”

“Safe,” he repeats. There’s that burning feeling, this time at his temple. Steve’s lips draw back to this time kiss the top of his cheekbone.

“You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

“Good,” he says this time, almost phrasing it like a question. And he was right, he thinks, because it isn’t a burning feeling; the word is warm.

“You’re so good, Bucky, okay? Best guy there is.”

“You,” he says, closing down. Shutting down. Sleeping. Sleeping is what it’s called, is what functioning human beings who deserve love like Bucky Barnes do when they’re tired and good and deserve sleep. He hears Steve chuckle, the noise, the feeling like chimes, filling him up to the brim with warmth and light.

Bucky thinks about crawling into his boyfriend’s lap again, knows he would find Steve half-hard, could just—rock against him until they both found relief, sticky and warm and in love—but he’s right. Bucky’s lids flutter. The situation isn’t right. Steve is a good man; the Winter Solider is not.

There has to be some human left in there. He can feel it like it’s weighing on the tip of his tongue. Bucky Barnes is sleepy and dormant and sluggishly tied to a pole somewhere in the back of his mind, but he is there, the reason Steve thinks he is good.

“So good,” Steve repeats, smoothing the hair back from the Winter Soldier’s forehead and planting a warm, burning kiss there. “Go to sleep, I’ve got you.”

You’ve got me, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud this time.


End file.
